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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26971690">lovelines</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingprince/pseuds/playingprince'>playingprince</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Red String of Fate, also they're in drama club</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:20:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26971690</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingprince/pseuds/playingprince</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Like any teenager, Renjun is a rebel. He won't wear his school uniform correctly. He won't listen to the teachers or the sharp-suited men on TV. He won't drop the snark or the smartassery, because that would mean submitting to expectation.</p><p>And most importantly, no matter what, he won't marry his soulmate.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>61</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>411</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>lovelines</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/zzm_22g/gifts">zzm_22g</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for vivi, who won my fic giveaway. this is my first renmin fic -- hope u all enjoy!</p><p>no warnings for this one, only gave it a T for one scene of heavy smooching.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Renjun’s mother never married her soulmate.</p><p>It happened like that sometimes. A soulmate was not the same thing as a fated lover or a lifelong crush. It was what the very word implied — someone who completed you. Someone who shared your soul. Sometimes, this was the person you married. For Renjun’s mom, it was her best friend, a woman Renjun had known his whole life and was so much a part of it that he grew up calling her “auntie.” He did not realize until he was seven that she was not actually his aunt, but his mother’s soulmate.</p><p>Soulmates were not always compatible. That was why Renjun’s mother had married his father. She had wanted a husband and a baby. And his father’s soulmate had passed many years before they married, leaving him untethered and free-floating. It was always hard to believe in love after that, his father had told him. But once he realized that a soulmate was not always your partner, it became easier. He realized that his red string had only tied him down.</p><p>And so, Renjun grew up believing exactly that. He did not need a soulmate, and though it would be lovely to find one, he probably would not marry them, anyway. Why did his life need to be ruled by a silly string, when he couldn’t even see it? It only appeared when a person was “ready to see it” — and Renjun was not quite sure what that meant, but the rebel in him said he didn’t need the world to tell him when he was ready for love or not. He would love by his own rules, on his own terms.</p><p>Maybe it would be easier if it weren’t like that. The thought tempted him sometimes. What if soulmates were simple and obvious and easy to understand? What if they could be a straight answer, a flashing sign above a person’s head that said, <em>I’m meant for you, I’m yours?</em></p><p>Whenever he caught himself feeling that way, he retaliated against it.</p><p>“I’m not ever getting married,” he told Jaemin one day, as they lay beneath the apple tree in the schoolyard.</p><p>“Never?” Jaemin’s eyebrows scrunched. They tended to do that in response to about half the words that came out of Renjun’s mouth. “Not even your soulmate?”</p><p>“Soulmates are overrated,” Renjun responded drily. “Half the time, I think they’re made up.”</p><p>Jaemin shook his head so quickly that he messed up his bangs, leaving them fluffy and crooked across his forehead. “Of course they’re real. Just ask my parents.”</p><p>Jaemin’s parents were soulmates, as he’d proudly told Renjun the very first time they’d met back in kindergarten. He always described their relationship like it was a fairytale. On his very first day of college, his father had awoken to find a crimson string tied to his pinky. He’d jolted out of bed, heart racing, knowing exactly what it had meant. He had followed that string down his dorm hallway into the elevator, where it had been closed between the metal doors. The string had continued past the dining hall, the campus center, in through the library doors. He’d picked up his pace there, knowing he was getting close, bounding through the lobby and into the stacks. The other students had watched him with amused grins and knowingly raised brows. But he did not care, and had kept running, despite the glare shot his way from the frontdesk librarian.</p><p>He’d turned the corner, and smacked right into a pretty girl with glasses and a messy ponytail. They’d fallen back on their butts, eyes squeezed shut as they’d rubbed their bumped noses. Jaemin’s father had opened his eyes. Around the girl’s pinky was a little red string.</p><p>Despite their soreness, both of them had begun to laugh.</p><p>“I want a soulmate just like that,” Jaemin said. “Someone I love. Someone I’ll marry.”</p><p>“Not everyone marries their soulmate,” Renjun reminded him.</p><p>“But how do you know it’s true love, then?” Jaemin asked. “It’s the only certain way to know. Marrying someone else — that would just be a guess. It might not last forever.”</p><p>Renjun propped his head on his arm and took a bite from a fallen apple. He thought Jaemin’s worldview was too oversimplified. His vision of love was one-dimensional, yet he clung to it like it was the only thing in life that mattered.</p><p>“Are you trying to say that my parents aren’t really in love?” Renjun asked. If he was being honest, he wondered the same thing sometimes. If his mother had married his auntie, would they have ended up happier? Their life would have been different. Renjun would never have been born. He had a hard time reconciling that fact.</p><p>“No,” Jaemin said quickly, apologetically. He rolled in the grass to look more clearly at Renjun’s face. “Of course not. I wasn’t trying to say that.”</p><p>“Then who even cares about the red string?” Renjun took another bite from his apple. It crunched loudly and spilled a drop of juice down his chin.</p><p>Jaemin’s face turned string-red. “I do. I don’t know why. But it matters to me.”</p><p>They went quiet. Renjun stared up at the clouds as they drifted by, white and innocent. The sun that day was spring-soft, its rays gentle as if passing through a filter. Renjun raised the half-eaten apple in his hand, letting its skin glint in the light. It was beautiful, shiny red. Red, red, red.</p><p>He took another bite, but spit it out. It was rotted on the inside, dug through by a worm’s trail, already gone bad.</p><p>—</p><p>After school that day was drama club. The school’s stageroom was at the back of the old wing, where the interiors faded from shiny new tile floors to aged wood and chipped-paint walls. The stage itself was like a relic of a bygone era, the school’s budget being constantly funneled into new tech for the labs, while leaving the arts thoroughly underfunded. The red velvet curtains stunk of dust and mothballs — it smelled just the same as when Renjun had peeled the lid from a box in his grandpa’s attic to find an old felt hat with a dent in its top. In fact, the entire backstage area seemed attic-like, with chests of period-style clothes and unvarnished vanities and creaky floors. Renjun knew it like the back of his hand after being part of the crew for three years. He’d learned to love it despite its decrepitude. His favorite place was the costume closet in the far back and the spare room behind it, where he remembered taking naps during long weekend practices, curling on top of a floofy dress in lieu of a blanket.</p><p>It was their second meeting of the year. Their first meeting had been predictably chaotic, with the freshmen constantly asking questions and forming an inharmonious chorus of voices when the teacher had asked what production they wanted to put on that semester. They’d spent the next half-hour debating it, tossing out old classics and contemporary hits until the stage director had clapped her hands and announced, “Well. I think I’ve decided to go with <em>Romeo and Juliet</em>.”</p><p>Renjun had groaned and thrown his head back in his seat. Beside him, Jaemin’s face had lit up in eager glee.</p><p>“It’s a popular story,” the director had explained. “Plus, we already have costumes and sets from past productions of it. It’ll save us a lot of money.” She looked up at the droopy curtains and a crooked, broken stagelight. “God knows we need it.”</p><p>Their second meeting was set aside for auditions. All the crew was invited to watch in the audience, while the director, the drama club president, and a few other seniors sat at the front with their scripts and clipboard spread over the table. Renjun might have gone to the far back of the auditorium and goofed off on his phone the whole time, except Jaemin was auditioning for the role of Romeo, and Renjun had promised to offer his undivided attention and support. He scooted to the edge of his chair and leaned his arms on the one in front of him, blinking extra hard to try and keep himself awake and invested.</p><p>Frankly, he wasn’t too interested in love stories. They were all the same, something about a boy and girl and their dumb red string. Renjun was quite certain that the director had ultimately chosen <em>Romeo and Juliet</em> as a sort of propaganda.</p><p>“Studies show that less and less people are marrying their soulmates,” said a man on the TV just the other night during dinner. “It seems that young people are less likely to get married in general, and when they do, they are becoming more open to nontraditional partnerships.”</p><p>His mother had scoffed into her forkful of pasta. “Nontraditional my ass. People are so keen on holding onto old customs.”</p><p>Renjun had silently agreed. It used to be that nearly everyone married their soulmates. Now people were branching out and considering different options. It seemed to Renjun that the old suit-wearing men in the government did not like this very much. They believed that non-soulmate marriages were less secure. After all, how could you be certain that a match would last if you didn’t have that solid string of proof?</p><p>His father had placed his hand over his mother’s, and stroked his thumb over her wedding ring.</p><p>Renjun had found it hard to believe his parents couldn’t be called soulmates, or something similar, even if they hadn’t found each other at the end of their red strings.</p><p>The old floorboards creaked as Jaemin walked out onto the stage.</p><p>Jaemin was a wonderful actor. He’d been the star of two of their previous productions, which had earned him a legion of fans both among the drama club and the student body as a whole. The girls liked to ambush him during lunch or in the hall to ask him about his weekend plans, or to beg him to reenact a scene from the school play for them. He’d received about a hundred love letters in his desk, too, sealed with heart-shaped stickers and sometimes accompanied by tins of homemade cookies and wrapped candies.</p><p>Renjun always bristled at the sight of it.</p><p>Jaemin would shrug, place the letters in his backpack, and say, “They ought to know by now I’m not interested in dating.”</p><p>No — Jaemin was always waiting for his red string. He’d even told his parents that he was saving his first kiss for his soulmate. Renjun thought this made Jaemin unexpectedly pure; the rest of their classmates had already kicked tradition to the curb and begun dating long before their strings were expected to appear. Renjun himself had dated a girl in the eighth grade, though they’d never gone beyond handholding. High school had been a wash, mostly due to the slowly dawning realization that he was not so interested in girls as he was in boys. He’d needed a little more time to catch up, mentally and emotionally. Now, in his senior year, he was intent on nabbing that first kiss and first boyfriend as soon as the opportunity presented itself.</p><p>Jaemin began to read his monologue: “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?” The emotion was earnestly rendered on his face, like the words were being spoken from his soul. Even the way he stood was posed to perfection, one hand held loftily under the beam of light, his feet spread and weight shifted contrapposto like a statue. Renjun usually found those cheesy monologues cringy, but Jaemin’s complete commitment and unashamedness was impossible to scoff at.</p><p>When he was finished, Renjun saw the director lean over to whisper something in the club president’s ear. They shared a serious nod, and Renjun knew Jaemin had it in the bag.</p><p>On the way home, Renjun walked on the high wall beside the sidewalk, taking it one foot in front of the other like a balance beam. Jaemin walked below him, still smiling as if the exhilaration of the audition had followed him out the door.</p><p>“What do you think, Renjun?” he asked. “Was my audition okay?”</p><p>“Of course it was,” Renjun responded. “They ate it up. You’re very Romeo-like.”</p><p>Jaemin laughed. “Romeo-like? What’s that even mean?”</p><p>“Oh, you just flutter your eyelashes and look at them with your big dark eyes and they know you’re a heartthrob.” Snidely, he added, “If only they knew how little romantic experience you actually had.”</p><p>Jaemin aimed a playful punch at Renjun’s leg. Renjun dodged it with an artful hop.</p><p>“Funny, coming from you. Anyway. You come around on <em>Romeo and Juliet</em> yet?”</p><p>“No.” Renjun lifted his chin in the air. “I still think it’s a lame choice. Obviously, they only chose it because it’s a classic soulmates tale.”</p><p>“It’s a tragedy,” Jaemin pointed out. “They’re soulmates, but their fighting families make their love forbidden. It’s about overcoming everything for the sake of your soulmate’s love.”</p><p>“They die at the end,” Renjun said flatly. “They don’t overcome anything. And that’s a silly sort of conflict. Romeo and Julliet must know they’re in the right the whole time, once they see their string. They have the moral high ground. They never have to question their love, because they know it’s fate, whether their families approve or not.” He called to mind the scene where it all began — <em>Romeo and Juliet meet at the ball. The string appears between them, beautiful deep red like a thin trail of blood. Cleverly, as the nurse approaches, Juliet tugs the string from Romeo’s hand, folds it, and hides it inside the breast of her gown. It’s then that they know they are meant to be.</em> “It would be more compelling if they <em>weren’t </em>soulmates, wouldn’t it?” Renjun suggested.</p><p>“I don’t think they would have gone to such lengths, if they weren’t soulmates. It would have been too uncertain.”</p><p>“Maybe that’s a good thing.” Renjun put into words the thoughts that were always echoing inside his head. Even though Jaemin usually disagreed with him, he was the only person he felt he could be that honest with. “What’s the point of a relationship that’s all fate and certainty? You don’t have to put in any work. You don’t have to grow. I wouldn’t want a love like that.”</p><p>As he said it, one of his feet fell too close to the edge, and he wobbled. Jaemin offered a hand, gently helping him down from the wall and onto the ground, and the touch lingered a few steps more as they made their way home.</p><p>—</p><p>In class the next day, Jaemin walked into the room to find four girls preemptively crowded around his desk. He let out a sigh behind his hand, not wanting them to think he was rude, and crossed to his seat.</p><p>“Jaemin!” one of them cooed, bouncing on her feet. “I saw your audition yesterday! It was so good — you’re the perfect Romeo.”</p><p>“Haha, thanks,” he said, setting his notebook on his desk. He was well-aware of the effect he had on the girls. As much as it gave him a confidence boost, he always felt bad about it, as if he was leading them on. It wasn’t intentional, of course — he’d made it clear before he was not interested in dating, but they pursued him anyway.</p><p>One of them held out a white paper bag. “Jaemin, I — I made you a gift, if you want it.” The other girls gasped and giggled.</p><p>“Oh. Uh.” He tried to decide what was worse, accepting it and encouraging the behavior, or turning it away and breaking her heart in front of her friends. Resignedly, he took the bag and peered down into it. There was a layer of tissue paper, and beneath it, a homemade red scarf with fringe at the ends. “It’s pretty. Thank you.”</p><p>Her face went as red as the scarf. “It was nothing! I just thought that since it’s almost winter — I’m not a great knitter, but —”</p><p>“It’s really, really nice. I like it.” He wrapped it around his neck to test it out. He had to admit it was very soft. “I mean it — thank you.”</p><p>The girl opened her mouth to say something else, but then the classroom door opened. It was Minju, another one of the girls who often flocked to Jaemin’s desk. She’d even bought him some expensive peanut butter fudge and a bouquet of roses last year after his performance in <em>Twelve Angry Men. </em>However, today she pointedly ignored him and went directly to her desk, sitting straight-backed in her chair.</p><p>Jaemin felt strangely hurt at her lack of interest. Maybe he <em>was </em>getting a little full of himself off all the attention.</p><p>“Did you hear?” one of the girls whispered. “Minju got her string yesterday after school.”</p><p>“She did?” another girl asked. “Oh wow. She’s the first person in our class, right?”</p><p>The girls scampered across the room to pounce on Minju and interrogate her for the details.</p><p>Jaemin frowned. A person was supposed to get their soulmate thread when they were “ready” — for most people, this was after high school, once they began to figure out who they were and what they wanted to do in the future. It was pretty rare for someone to get theirs so early. Jaemin had been praying that his string would appear everyday for as long as he could remember. Perhaps that was why his had yet to make itself known. He was too impatient.</p><p>Even so, he had an idea of who his soulmate might be already.</p><p>“Hey.”</p><p>There was a tug on the back of the scarf. Jaemin turned to see Renjun behind him, head tilted and lips pursed. His tie was knotted crookedly, and the top few buttons of his shirt undone. Jaemin predicted a firm scolding from the teacher in Renjun’s future, though Renjun was used to it by now. He’d already gotten chewed out the first week of the semester for dying his hair bubblegum pink. Jaemin had to admit it was a flattering look on him.</p><p>“Hey,” he said.</p><p>“What’s this?” Renjun wiggled the scarf between his fingers. “It’s only September.”</p><p>“Ah —” Jaemin took the scarf off and folded it in his lap. “It was a gift.”</p><p>Renjun kept eyeing the scarf. Jaemin studied him, to try and figure out what was going on in his head, but Renjun was excellent at keeping a straight face.</p><p>“It’s very red,” Renjun said. “It’s almost blinding. Like a police siren.”</p><p>“Don’t be mean,” Jaemin warned him. “It’s handmade.”</p><p>“Hmm. Any cookies today?”</p><p>“No.” When he did get gifted snacks, he usually shared them with Renjun. Despite Renjun’s small stature, he could eat like a horse. Jaemin liked to think he converted it into fuel for his snark and fist-shaking.</p><p>Renjun sighed and propped his elbow on Jaemin’s shoulder. His breath touched the lobe of Jaemin’s ear as he said, “Well, what’s the commotion over there?” He pointed to the gathering at Minju’s desk.</p><p>Jaemin’s cheeks pinkened. He shrugged Renjun off of him. “She got her soulmate string yesterday.”</p><p>Renjun quickly said, “That’s boring. I thought it would be something more exciting, considering all the noise they’re making.” He let out a long yawn.</p><p>Jaemin did not neglect to notice the performed disinterest; Renjun would never let anyone think he had even the vaguest investment in the matter of soulmates. It would be a sign of weakness, or an inconsistency in the character he’d chosen for himself. Jaemin could see through it. It gave him a little hope to know that somewhere, deep down, Renjun still cared. He simply didn’t want anyone to <em>know </em>he cared.</p><p>Sometimes, Jaemin wished he hadn’t chosen such a bullheaded person for a best friend, but it was too late to change it. He was attached beyond help.</p><p>“You know,” Jaemin said, testing the waters, “I hope I get my string soon. Don’t you?”</p><p>Renjun drew away from Jaemin’s chair and went to his desk.</p><p>Jaemin thought the silence was more telling than words, though he wasn’t yet sure how to interpret it.</p><p>—</p><p>Now that their play was decided, the stage crew had begun to work on costumes and props. They needed several elaborate sets, some of which were being recycled from past productions, including the famous balcony which was constructed from wood and cardboard and desperately needed a fresh coat of paint. Renjun had been relegated to painting duty, since he had always been good with a brush (he took much pride in his A+ in art class four years running), and had even been assigned the position of “painting team leader.” Presently, the painting team consisted only of him and three underclassmen, who sat beside him on the backstage floor with buckets of paint and shallow trays. They’d changed out of their uniforms and into their gym clothes to guard against paint splatter.</p><p>“If you do it like this,” Renjun explained, laying the brush so the ends of its bristles stamped the cardboard, “it looks like rock grain. Once we get the base color down, we should go over it like that in a darker gray.”</p><p>“That’s a good idea.” The girl beside him, Miyoung, said. She grinned and prodded him with the handle of her brush. “I knew we could count on Huang Renjun, artiste extraordinaire.” She was a junior, and probably Renjun’s favorite of the drama club underclassmen. She’d been very quiet for her first year, but as a sophomore she’d begun to brighten up a lot. He’d discovered she actually had a very dry and very funny sense of humor beneath the shyness. She reminded him a bit of himself. She nudged her glasses, and a bit of paint stuck to the frames.</p><p>They quieted a bit after first setting to work, and as they became used to the motions of it, began to chat idly between themselves. Behind them, out on the stage proper, they could hear the actors practicing a scene. The girl playing Juliet was Soyoung, another cast regular like Jaemin. She was talented, but too proud for Renjun’s liking. He heard her say a line with melodramatic flourish, then Jaemin recite his own back. He played it more lowkey, but impressive nonetheless. He was good at subtlety, which Renjun found surprising, since off the stage he was anything but.</p><p>“Jaemin’s a good actor, isn’t he?” Miyoung said.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah,” Renjun agreed flatly. “Says you and all the girls.”</p><p>She laughed. “I’m not interested in him like that. Besides, I think they’re barking up the wrong tree. He isn’t interested in dating, is he?”</p><p>“No. He’s holding out.”</p><p>“Strange.” Most kids, even those who intended on marrying their soulmate, still dated freely in high school. Partially for fun, partially as a practice run before the real thing. Because of this, dating had a carefree air to it. It wasn’t meant to be permanent.</p><p>“What about you?” Miyoung asked.</p><p>“What about me?”</p><p>“Are you holding out?”</p><p>Renjun painted more broadly, lazily dragging his brush in a curved line. “I’’m not interested in soulmates at all. So it’s not like I’m waiting around for it.”</p><p>“Oh.” She paused, watching him work. Her gaze attached to the birthmark on the back of his hand and followed it around the cardboard. “Are you dating someone, then?”</p><p>“Nah,” Renjun responded. Jokingly, he added, “Maybe Jaemin should donate some of his posse to me. Must be nice to be Mr. Popular.”</p><p>“Ah, don’t be like that. You aren’t completely unpopular yourself.”</p><p>“Really.” Renjun had always figured the other kids saw him as Jaemin’s hanger-on. They were always together, ever since kindergarten, but had developed in very different ways. Renjun, the blunt boy with the rebellious streak. Loud talker, dyed hair, refusing to wear his tie at all until the school threatened to suspend him. Then there was Jaemin, the drama club darling. Polite, universally beloved, so good-natured that even the other boys had to admit they liked him despite their obvious jealousy.</p><p>Renjun thought they must wonder what Jaemin saw in him. But relationships could be hard to parse from the outside looking in. He and Jaemin balanced each other out, and that’s all there was to it.</p><p>“Really,” Miyoung confirmed, a little forcefully. “You’re likeable, too, just a little… <em>intimidating. </em>Maybe you have a secret admirer, and they’re just scared to admit it.”</p><p>“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Renjun responded. </p><p>She quietly went back to painting. Renjun could hear again the voices from the stage, and perhaps he was the only one able to pick it out, but he thought he could hear the slightest bit of distractedness in Jaemin’s voice, like his heart wasn’t all there.</p><p>—</p><p>During the sixth week of the production, Jaemin felt as though he’d been struck by a bomb.</p><p>It happened as he and Renjun were walking home from school. It was almost November now, and the air was chilly against their skin, no sun to warm it. Renjun was talking about how impatient he was for the snowfall, because winter was his favorite season. When they were younger, it was always Renjun that would come knocking on Jaemin’s door to beg him to come sled down the big hill. Jaemin was the more timid of the two, and would try to offer what he considered a more appealing alternative, like building a snowman or making snow angels. But Renjun would flash his huge puppy dog eyes and bounce around in his little fuzzy boots, and Jaemin would not be able to resist his charms. They would climb up the hill on all fours to keep their balance, sled dragged over Renjun’s shoulder, and they would both squeeze in, Renjun in the front, Jaemin in the back.</p><p>“Are you ready?” Renjun would ask. He always asked before scooching them forward. He always made sure Jaemin was comfortable and unsurprised.</p><p>Jaemin would close his fingers around Renjun’s waist. Even back then, Renjun was smaller than the other kids, though he had enough fire to more than make up for it. “I’m ready,” Jaemin would say.</p><p>Renjun would lean, and the sled would shift beneath them, rolling forward towards the crest of the hill. Then, like he was on a rollercoaster, Jaemin would feel his stomach lift and lurch as if he’d left it behind at the top, replaced by butterflies. He would hold onto Renjun for dear life, and when they hit the snowbank at the bottom, it would cause them to stick together as they flew from the sled and crashed onto the ground. Then they would lie there and catch their breaths, limbs overlapping, staring into the grey sky.</p><p>“That was fun, wasn’t it?” Renjun’s cheeks would be blotchily flushed with exhilaration. He’d look like he’d just lived the best moment of his life.</p><p>“Yeah,” Jaemin would say, and though he did not care for sledding, it would feel like the best moment of his life, too.</p><p>Jaemin remembered this now as he watched Renjun’s profile, his lips expelling white fog. They were not kids anymore, and it did not feel the same way it had all those years ago. As much as Jaemin trusted Renjun more than anyone, he was beginning to feel he could not tell him everything. He could not always expect Renjun to lead him in the right direction. He adjusted his scarf around his neck, the soft hand-knit one, and tucked an end into his coat.</p><p>Renjun watched it, unblinking, expression unreadable.</p><p>“So,” he said. “Seems like practice went well today. The girls were melting over you and Soyoung’s chemistry.”</p><p>“Were they?” Jaemin laughed. “I didn’t know we had any.”</p><p>“Ah, come on. She’s a pretty girl. Half the guys would kill to be in your spot.”</p><p>“Sure. But I guess I don’t see it like that. It’s only acting.”</p><p>A corner of Renjun’s lips lifted. “Then you shouldn’t care about the kiss, right?”</p><p>Jaemin stopped walking. Another pair of students who were walking behind him parted to pass, like streams splitting around an island.</p><p>“What?” Jaemin said.</p><p>“What do you mean, ‘what?’ The kiss. With Soyoung.”</p><p>“The kiss…”</p><p>“You’ve read the whole script, right? You know that Romeo and Juliet is a <em>romance, </em>right?” Renjun grabbed Jaemin by the shoulders and gave him a small shake. “Jaemin. You can’t be serious. You know that you have to kiss her in it, <em>right?</em>”</p><p>“I — I guess I didn’t even think of it.” Jaemin felt like his gut had dropped through a trapdoor. He’d read the script, but for some reason he hadn’t even given the kiss a second thought, as if it wasn’t even there. <em>Of course </em>he had to kiss her. He was Romeo. He placed his hands on his knees and bent slightly like he might throw up.</p><p>“Oh my god. You are so completely hopeless sometimes.” Renjun’s hand did not leave Jaemin’s shoulder. He squeezed it. “Well. What are you gonna do? Drop out?”</p><p>“I can’t drop out now,” Jaemin muttered. “It’s too late. I’d ruin the whole production if they had to recast. I can’t do that to them.”</p><p>“So you’re staying in.”</p><p>“I…” The sidewalk tilted under Jaemin’s feet. He was dizzy at his own self-betrayal. Renjun must have thought he was overreacting, but didn’t say so. “I guess I have to do it.”</p><p>“It won’t be that bad,” Renjun assured him. His hand crept up to the back of Jaemin’s head, fingers ghosting through his hair. “They won’t make you do it for real until it gets closer to opening night. For practices they’ll probably just have you pretend. So at least you have a few weeks to mentally prepare yourself.”</p><p>This was not an especially comforting notion. It didn’t change the inevitable, and everytime they were on stage from now on, Jaemin would have to look at Soyoung’s face and imagine himself kissing her in front of hundreds of people. That was not what he wanted his first kiss to be.</p><p>He stood up straight, swallowing his sickness. There was still a bitter taste in his mouth as he said, “What do you think, Renjun?”</p><p>“About what?”</p><p>“About me kissing her.”</p><p>Renjun’s eyebrows pinched. Just like whenever they talked about soulmates, Jaemin could see something turning behind his eyes, and he almost thought he knew what it was, but Renjun was too obscure to read.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Renjun said. “I think it’s fine. It would do you good to loosen up about the whole soulmate thing. Sometimes I think you’d follow your damn string off a cliff, if that’s where it led you.” Any comfort or patience he’d been offering Jaemin just a moment before was erased as he turned away, shoulders squared.</p><p>“Oh,” Jaemin said. “Okay.”</p><p>“What’s with the scarf?” Renjun glanced back, eyes sharp.</p><p>Jaemin touched a hand to it. “I dunno. It was a gift.”</p><p>Renjun kicked a pebble along the sidewalk. His cheeks were red, like they’d just whooshed down the side of a snowy hill.</p><p>“Here,” Jaemin said. He unraveled the scarf from around his neck halfway, and slung the end over Renjun’s shoulder. It was long enough to wrap around them both if they walked close together.</p><p>“What are you doing?”</p><p>“You looked cold.”</p><p>Renjun didn’t object. He let Jaemin wrap him up, even fold the fringed end and slip it under the collar of his coat. In the cold, with his blush and his fairy-pink hair and too-big scarf, Jaemin thought Renjun looked beautiful, though if he said this, he thought he might get socked in the stomach. One day, he would overcome his fear and say it anyway.</p><p>They continued walking home, pressed shoulder to shoulder, linked to each other by their shared scarf.</p><p>—</p><p>Renjun stood on his toes at the front of the classroom. He’d been assigned chalkboard cleaning duty that day which he would not have minded except he had to strain to reach the top. Behind him, the rest of the room had already been deserted, even by Jaemin, as they had drama club that day. Renjun cursed quietly under his breath, wondering if this would make him late. He gave a little hop, and his sponge touched the top slab of the board, dribbling soapy water down it.</p><p>There was little time left before graduation. Only the rest of this semester, then one more following it. After that, Renjun had already begun to plan for the future. He wanted to go to college and study literature. He wanted to move to the city, where things were always busy and never quiet. He wanted to forget that soulmates existed and kiss someone on an impulse, maybe a stranger, maybe a new friend, and let it lead him in an unexpected direction. He’d told Jaemin this once at age fourteen, when he’d been staying the night at his house. “You really are an individualist,” Jaemin had remarked, tugging the blanket. They’d slept on the living room floor, Renjun in a pair of borrowed, oversized pajamas.</p><p>“Don’t you think everyone should be?” Renjun had asked, yanking the blanket back, uncovering one of Jaemin’s legs.</p><p>Jaemin had not said anything else. He’d simply turned on his side, searching for the warmth, drawing closer to Renjun. Renjun already knew what Jaemin wanted. He wanted everything Renjun did not want. It became crystal clear at that moment that they were not moving towards the same destination. They did not stand on the same ground. For the first time ever, Renjun felt they were disconnected. The feeling had followed him ever since.</p><p>The classroom door opened. Miyoung poked her head in.</p><p>“Hey,” Renjun said. “What are you doing in the senior’s wing?”</p><p>“Jaemin said you were still here.” She slipped inside, hands folded behind her back. “I thought I’d come and talk to you before drama club.”</p><p>Renjun squeezed out the dirty sponge into the bucket. It made a splattering sound, and a stray drop landed on his shoelaces. “What for?”</p><p>“I — I wanted to give you something,” she stuttered. She pushed up her glasses, briefly concealing her eyes.</p><p>Renjun dropped the sponge into the bucket, scattering more drops, and wiped his hands dry on a rag. “Oh. What is it?”</p><p>Miyoung scurried over, stumbled to a stop in front of him, then thrust out both arms in front of her. She was holding a white envelope. Curiously, Renjun took it, thumb touching the edge of his name where it was written. “What is it?” he asked. “An invitation to something?” But he knew that was not the case when he finally turned it over and saw the heart-shaped sticker sealing the flap.</p><p>Miyoung raced out of the room before he could call after her.</p><p>A love letter.</p><p>Renjun had never received one in his life.</p><p>Still in shock, he tore it open and unfolded the paper inside.</p><p>
  <em>Renjun,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know this might seem weird but I want to get it out in the open. I’ve been too shy to say it, but I’ve had a crush on you since last year. I’m sure you only think of me as a friend or even just an underclassman, so you probably won’t see this coming. I hope I didn’t catch you too off-guard.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you want to be my boyfriend I would be really happy. If not, I’m sorry for bothering you. I hope we can still be friends.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Miyoung</em>
</p><p>It was so earnest he had to blush at it. And as she’d said, he certainly did not see it coming. He wondered if this was what Jaemin felt everytime he received a letter. Flattered, but strangely guilty.</p><p>He handed it to Jaemin after drama club, as they sat on Renjun’s couch. Both his parents were still at work. These were his favorite times to be with Jaemin. Just the two of them, outside of the social system of the school, no uniforms and no pretense.</p><p>“I don’t want to read this,” Jaemin said, trying to hand it back. “That seems kind of weird.”</p><p>“But I need your advice. I’ve never gotten one, so I don’t know the protocol.”</p><p>Jaemin sighed. Reluctantly, with one eye half-shut, he read over the note. “Looks like a pretty typical love letter. She seems like a sweet girl. Are you interested in her? I thought you’d decided you liked boys.”</p><p>“I do. I think.”</p><p>“Well.” Jaemin folded the note gently, as if paying it proper respect, and placed it back inside its envelope. “What do you want me to say? You have to reject her if you aren’t going to date her.”</p><p>Renjun leaned back on the armrest. He was sitting against one, and Jaemin against the other, toes touching on the middle cushion.</p><p>“I don’t know,” he said. “<em>Should </em>I reject her?”</p><p>“We just established the fact that you aren’t attracted to her.”</p><p>“Yeah. But maybe it would be nice to have a girlfriend anyway. I don’t think I would mind kissing a girl. And we get along well.”</p><p>Jaemin balked and let his hand drop to his lap. “Renjun. No way. That’s the same thing as leading her on, if you aren’t taking it seriously.”</p><p>“It wouldn’t be serious anyway,” Renjun countered, “since we aren’t soulmates, right? I don’t see the harm. I wouldn’t want to <em>marry </em>a girl, but why can’t I just… <em>hang out </em>with her, you know?”</p><p>Jaemin pulled his legs in, away from Renjun, isolated at the couch’s far end.</p><p>“I don’t get you,” he said.</p><p>Renjun chewed his lip, waiting. He’d been waiting for Jaemin to say something for years, but the words he wanted had never quite found their way out. He felt like they were both talking in code, <em>screaming </em>at each other, but having two different conversations at once.</p><p>Impatiently, he stood from the couch and snatched the letter back.</p><p>“If you don’t want me to date her,” he said, “then just say so.”</p><p>Jaemin’s lips parted in surprise. “What are you mad for?”</p><p>“I’m not mad,” Renjun insisted, despite the sharp edge of his voice.</p><p>They went silent. The clock on the wall ticked and it sounded too fast. It made Renjun nervous.</p><p>“Are you going to date her?” Jaemin asked quietly.</p><p>Renjun walked into the kitchen, tore the love letter into pieces, and threw it into the trash.</p><p>—</p><p>Jaemin’s family were not only traditional, but superstitious. This was a common trait for those who valued soulmate bonds, because soulmates were a sort of superstition in and of themselves, and if a string could tell you who you were meant to marry, didn’t it follow that you could find signs anywhere?</p><p>So every New Year’s, Jaemin’s parents scheduled him an appointment with a fortune teller. This year, however, he requested that he get his meeting in a little early. He needed the guidance. He needed the reassurance that all his waiting was worth it.</p><p>He was squeezed in during the middle of November, less than a month before <em>Romeo and Juliet</em>’s opening night.</p><p>His fortune teller, or “family divinator” as she preferred (which Jaemin thought made her sound suspiciously like a physician), was a woman who always wore turtlenecks and smelled of patchouli. Her shop was downtown and seemed to do quite well for itself, with people constantly in and out the door, crammed back-to-back in tight thirty minute sessions. High schoolers seemed to be her most populous clientele, probably for their soulmate-related quandaries. His mother dropped him off at the curb outside the shop, then drove away to pick up some groceries in the meantime. He walked up the front steps and entered the glass door.</p><p>The woman’s office had eggshell walls and sparse decoration. This lended even more to her doctor-like air, projecting an aura of professionalism and authority. Jaemin had thought, before his first reading at the age of twelve, that a fortune teller’s office would be cramped with ornamentation — maps, masks, beaded curtains. But she had none of these things, just a fine wooden table and a braided rug and a poster on the wall which listed all her areas of expertise, including crystallomancy, taromancy, and oneiromancy. Jaemin wondered if she used all the fancy language so as to seem more sophisticated.</p><p>“Hello again, Jaemin,” she said as he walked in, opening a tiny notebook over her table and clicking her pen. She wore a sky blue turtleneck that day, and a pair of glasses with a silver chain.</p><p>“Hi,” he said, taking his seat across from her. On a side table was a burning vanilla-scented incense. This, and the choice to light much of her office by candle, were the only things in the room that seemed to fit the stereotype.</p><p>“How have you been since I last saw you? I noticed you’re taking your meeting early this year.” She nudged her glasses down her nose to peer over them. “Is there something pressing you need advice on?”</p><p>“Kind of,” he said, then realized it was silly to lie to a woman whose job was to read his future, and amended, “Well, yes.”</p><p>“Let’s see if I can’t help it.” She removed a book from beneath the table and opened it beside her. “How old are you turning next year?”</p><p>“Eighteen.”</p><p>“Then I think we’ll do a palm reading. I like to do these with clients entering adulthood — they tend to be very telling.”</p><p>Jaemin sat up to look at her open book. It showed a diagram of a hand, marked with dotted lines and with blocks of text on either side. Carefully, she took his right hand and laid it at the middle of the table, knuckles resting on the wood. Then she turned her pen upside down, and used the clicking end to trace the lines of his hand.</p><p>It was a little while before she said anything at all. Instead, she was moving back and forth between hand and book and notebook, reading, then <em>hmm</em>-ing to herself, then jotting something down before moving back to his palm, pressing hard with the pen and lowering her brows as if she found something troubling there.</p><p>“Do… do you see anything?” he asked.</p><p>She prodded a line at the top half of his palm, making his fingers twitch. “I think this area is likely of particular interest to you.”</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“The heart line. It can give insight into your love life.”</p><p>His skin prickled at the mere mention of love. “Does it say anything?” he asked, leaning in closer.</p><p>“It does. I’m guessing that you’ve been troubled by love recently. Is that the reason you came in?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Then tell me if this sounds correct.” She placed her pen at one end of the line, close to his thumb. It struck a nerve, giving him a little uncomfortable jolt through his bones. “The way it curves close to your fingers — it’s a sign of repression. Hidden feelings. The need to make a choice, or otherwise, to continue standing still. And the brokenness of the line, the way it becomes faint in certain areas —” She traced along, pen bumping along the shape of his palm. “— you’re being pulled in many different directions. You’re too easily influenced. You want one thing, but convince yourself of another. You listen too much to what others think and expect of you. You can’t separate how you feel from how you think you should feel.”</p><p>Jaemin folded his hand half-shut. It sounded right. It almost scared him, how right it was. Did he want to marry his soulmate for himself, or because it was what his parents had told him? What about the things he saw on TV, the drill-it-into-you-from-birth, the need to conform? Jaemin did not know why the things that were important to him were important to him. He only knew what those things were, and even then, he found himself second-guessing all the time.</p><p><em>Sometimes I think you’d follow your damn string off a cliff, if that’s where it led you, </em>Renjun had said.</p><p><em>Yes. Because it’s there, </em>Jaemin responded too late. <em>Because it feels certain when nothing else does. I cling to it because I’m afraid I won’t know what to do without it.</em></p><p>“What should I do?” he asked. The candle flame flickered in the dish beside him.</p><p>“I can’t tell you precisely. This sort of divination doesn’t offer clear-cut solutions. Just an evaluation of your person.” She took her glasses off so they hung at her neck. “But I can give you advice of my own. Let’s be direct. If I asked you to tell me what kind of love you want — right now, without thinking about it — what would you say?”</p><p>“What my parents have,” he replied, without hesitating. “A soulmate.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because whenever they tell me how they fell in love, it sounds like a fairytale.” Jaemin smiled just thinking about it. He imagined his parents’ romance as if it was a storybook, the string spanning the centerfold. It had always seemed so pretty and so easy.</p><p>“People tend to outgrow fairytales,” the fortune teller said.</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“What if you were to fall in love with someone who isn't your soulmate? Wouldn’t that call the entire thing into question?”
</p><p>“I guess it would.”</p><p>“Have you ever been in love before?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>This caused her to raise both brows, wrinkling her forehead. “And?”</p><p>“I think he’s my soulmate.”</p><p>She laughed. “So you love someone, and that makes you think they’re your soulmate. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”</p><p>“I don’t get it.”</p><p>“Shouldn’t you see your string, then meet your soulmate, <em>then </em>fall in love with them? That’s how it worked for your parents, right?”</p><p>Jaemin struggled to parse it. It was a chicken-or-the-egg type scenario, and he was never good with logic. “I — it can work either way, can’t it?”</p><p>“What I’m trying to point out is how you’re shifting the meaning of the word around. Maybe you only think that person is your soulmate because you <em>want </em>them to be your soulmate. You want it so much you start to believe it. Even when you’ve got no string to prove it.”</p><p>Jaemin took his hand from the table and let it drop to his lap. With the thumb of his other hand, he traced the heart line, wishing it could tell him more.</p><p>“I don’t really know that he’s my soulmate,” Jaemin admitted, though it pained him. “It’s only a prediction.”</p><p>“You should leave the predictions to the professionals,” she said, tapping her fingers on her palmistry book, “though even <em>we </em>get it wrong, sometimes.”</p><p>—</p><p>People rushed around backstage. Soyoung was standing in front of one of the vanity mirrors in her Juliet gown as a stage crew member sewed something at the back, making the final adjustments before opening night. They would be wearing their costumes tonight for their final rehearsal; they were running it as if it were the real thing, because tomorrow, it <em>would </em>be the real thing, and the chairs in the auditorium would be filled with parents and classmates, watching with eager smiles. Most of the leads were well-used to being in the spotlight. Soyoung seemed to be more preoccupied by the fit at her bust rather than the upcoming opening night. She twisted with dissatisfaction, trying to find a flattering angle, tugging the dress up by its heart-shaped neckline. “Can’t you make it look any better than this?” she asked the girl sewing her up. “It makes me look droopy.”</p><p>“Maybe you’re just droopy by nature.”</p><p>Soyoung’s eyes went so round Renjun thought they might fall out.</p><p>He looked over at Jaemin the next vanity over, and was surprised to see him staring at his feet, fists folded tensely in his lap. Jaemin had been on that stage many times, and not once had Renjun ever seen a shred of anxiety in him; Jaemin was the type of boy who ate attention up, rather than shied away from it. Though things had been a little awkward between them the past few weeks, he wasn’t going to push Jaemin away when he needed him. He approached Jaemin’s chair from behind, ducking so he could be seen in the mirror.</p><p>“Hey,” he asked. “Is something the matter?”</p><p>Jaemin startled out of his daze and looked into the eyes of Renjun’s reflection. He slowly nodded.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>A group of stage crew members passed by behind them, carrying another huge gown to dress a noblewoman.</p><p>“Can we go somewhere quieter?” Jaemin asked.</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>Jaemin stood, and they walked through the crowd towards the costume closet, which was sparsely populated as all the outfits had been dragged out. In the back of the closet was another door, to an old, spare room which had once been an office or more storage space. High on the wall was a tiny window, where a little bit of afternoon sunshine rained through. The drama club kept some boxes of old props along one wall, which were coated in dust; this room was not used often. Renjun went and sat against the wall below the window, sensing this would not be a short talk. Jaemin joined him, sliding down and bumping arms.</p><p>“So what is it?” Renjun asked. “It isn’t like you to be nervous.”</p><p>Jaemin fiddled with a wrinkle in his trousers. He was partially dressed for the stage, wearing his period pants and shirt but also his sneakers and socks.</p><p>“It’s what we talked about before,” he said. “The kissing thing.”</p><p>“You aren’t still hung up on that, are you? You decided you were gonna do it.”</p><p>“I know. But…” Jaemin pressed his hand to his lips, and Renjun could see he was trembling. “Tonight’s the dress rehearsal, so. We have to kiss properly tonight as if it were the real thing. That way we don’t fudge it tomorrow.”</p><p>S<em>o that’s the reason. He’s nervous about his first kiss. </em>With Jaemin, that nervousness was doubled. It wasn’t just a first kiss, but the kiss he’d been saving for his soulmate. In an hour or so, he would have to give it away before he was ready.</p><p>“I don’t know, Jaemin,” Renjun said. “There’s not a whole lot you can do about it. You knew it was going to happen eventually.”</p><p>Jaemin watched the door. He seemed to dread having to open it back up. So long as he hid behind it, he could be honest and vulnerable a little bit longer. That was the way it had always been between the two of them. They told each other everything they were too afraid to say to anyone else. But the things they were too afraid to say to each other had no outlet. They piled like dirty laundry, straining to be contained behind closet and spare room doors.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Renjun went on. “But it’ll be fine. It’s only a kiss. There won’t even be any tongue or anything. So you’ll probably be less affected by it than you think.”</p><p>“Renjun,” Jaemin cut in, as if he couldn’t stand to hear him keep talking about it.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“If I asked you — if I asked you to kiss me, would you do it?”</p><p>Renjun felt as though time had frozen still. Like the clock in his living room had stopped its nervous ticking. “What?”</p><p>“Maybe I’m overreacting but… it’s really important to me. I don’t want to have my first kiss with a girl I barely know.” He looked at Renjun, eyes shimmery with budding tears, or perhaps it was just the shine of the window light. “If I can’t save it for my soulmate, then I at least want it to be with someone I trust. You know? And you’re my best friend, so…”</p><p>Renjun could feel the heat in his face, and he wished there was a way he could hide it so that Jaemin wouldn’t know what those words did to him. You were not supposed to kiss your best friend. It was essentially rule one of the best friends handbook. This hadn’t stopped Renjun from imagining it before; there were a few occasions when he and Jaemin had been sitting next to each other, on the couch or backstage or beneath the schoolyard apple tree, and Renjun had thought it would have been so easy to lean in and give Jaemin a kiss. He’d always brushed it off — though he knew far, far better — as him simply being a teenager: curious, lonely, and frankly a bit horny. And it just so happened he had a hot best friend, so those kinds of thoughts were inevitable, but easy to store away and forget about because Jaemin was so stubbornly opposed to any thought of giving away his first kiss.</p><p>Until now.</p><p>Renjun, perhaps out of routine, still tried to resist.</p><p>“You don’t want to do that,” he said. “You’re just anxious, and it’s making you crazy.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jaemin said hollowly.</p><p>“It might make things weird. So we probably shouldn’t.”</p><p>Jaemin looked down at his lap, biting his lip. It made it harder for Renjun to say no when he looked like that, half from the obvious hurt, half from how pretty he looked, gold dust-clad from the window over their heads.</p><p>“Maybe if it’s a quick one,” Renjun finally said. “You know. A small one.” It was <em>his </em>first kiss, too, but he didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want to admit that he was like Jaemin — sentimental, soft-hearted, shy to be intimate for the first time. He steeled himself. It was a point of pride.</p><p>“Really?” Jaemin immediately sat up straighter, as though he’d been brought back to life.</p><p>“Yeah. If it’ll make you feel better. So let’s get it over with.”</p><p>Jaemin nodded, face serious, and moved a little closer. They stared at each other. <em>One </em>of them had to be the one to bridge it, but seemed to dawn suddenly that this was really happening, and neither of them could quite process it. Jaemin swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbled prettily. Renjun realized how long they were hesitating, and in his typically brash way, decided he had to do something or else they would be stuck back there for the next decade, so he leaned in and pushed their lips clumsily together.</p><p>Time had gone unfrozen, but it still felt as though it was moving in slow motion, gears churning weakly under ice. Renjun couldn’t help but notice every little detail — how still Jaemin was at first, his reaction delayed; the way his lips felt, warm and plush and a little dry (Renjun thought it would do Jaemin well to invest in some chapstick); and Jaemin finally kissing him back, applying a little more pressure, a gentle suction on Renjun’s bottom lip. It gave Renjun a tingly feeling that spread all the way to his toes. The sensation was so unexpected he was nearly bowled over by it, and pulled back. The kiss didn’t disconnect, because Jaemin followed, putting a hand on Renjun’s cheek to hold him still.</p><p>When he parted his lips to demand another kiss, Renjun did not reject it. <em>So much for small and quick, </em>Renjun thought fleetingly, but a small, quick kiss would not have been enough anyway. Jaemin’s hand moved down to tilt up Renjun’s chin. It was a forwardness that was unexpected after the foot-shuffling and nervous fumbling. The kiss deepened, and it dawned on Renjun that this was serious. Strings attached, something unsaid, felt in the heart even if Renjun had not meant for it to be.</p><p>He relinquished himself to it and slipped his fingers into Jaemin’s hair. Another kiss, then another, a hint of tongue — already a better kiss than whatever Jaemin would get on the stage. Renjun didn’t doubt that Jaemin knew this, too — his hand had crept to Renjun’s waist, searching for bare skin. He was lucky that Renjun never tucked his school shirt in. His hand slipped under, palm flat on Renjun’s stomach, thumb brushing near his navel.</p><p>This was more real than a length of string. This was happening now, it was tangible, Jaemin’s mouth was open against his and he could feel goosebumps on his arms and his heart pounding in his ears —</p><p>Behind the door, in the costume closet, there was a clatter as something was taken from a hanger. A few voices resonated unintelligibly, then moved away again towards the backstage. The rehearsal was going to start soon. Renjun breathed, and it was like the heat of that breath unfroze the gears, time picking back up where it had left off.</p><p>Jaemin was still touching him, still a few inches away. His eyes were unfocused. All the kissing had made him dizzy.</p><p>He seemed to realize suddenly what it all meant, and whispered, “Uh oh.”</p><p>Renjun shoved his hand away, stood, and for once, tucked his shirt ends under his waistband. “Your lips are dry,” he said, then he opened the spare room door and walked back out into the bustle as if he had never left in the first place.</p><p>—</p><p>Jaemin wandered behind the velvet curtain in a daze. He felt he’d left his mind back behind the costume closet, and now he was only his body, functioning on autopilot.</p><p>One of the crew members attached his microphone. They would be testing the audio that night too. It should have made it feel more real, more dire, but Jaemin found he did not care.</p><p>When the stage was set, act one began, and Jaemin watched from the side as scenic Verona buzzed in front of an empty auditorium. The girls held their dresses below their hips, lifting them from their feet so they wouldn’t trip. The boys stood in wide stances, projecting power and anger, flashing the fake swords at their hips. Renjun might have been right, Jaemin realized. <em>Romeo and Juliet </em>was overrated. And he’d been through it so many times he could hardly stand to listen to it again. When his first line arrived and he made his way onto the stage, he couldn’t produce the same performance he usually did. A hollow indifference tinged his voice. He looked at Soyoung, his Juliet, and winced.</p><p>The scene with the kiss came upon them. “<em>Then have my lips the sin that they have took</em>,” Soyoung said, though he barely heard it. She placed her hands on his arms, face cool as an actress’s should be.</p><p>Jaemin leaned down and kissed her. He did not feel a single thing. It only lasted a second. She was the one to break it, turning her face away, waiting for him to recite his next line.</p><p>When the scene was over, the director called for them to stop.</p><p>“Jaemin,” she said, coming closer to the edge of the stage. “You seem distracted. Are you feeling alright?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” he responded.</p><p>“Are you sure? You lack enthusiasm.”</p><p>He knew this was a critique, but like the kiss, he barely noticed it. All he could think about was Renjun backstage, what expression must be on his face. Was he watching his blush in the mirror, or saying Jaemin’s name under his breath like a curse?</p><p>Jaemin dragged his sleeve over his mouth.</p><p>Two kisses in one day. But years from now, Jaemin knew he would only remember one of them. The first one, the real one.</p><p>—</p><p>Opening night was the second week in December, a fateful Friday. Snow had dusted in, accumulating day-by-day. The walks to school were cold, bundled and shivering, bushes lining the road coated in ice cloaks. Renjun watched them out the car window. The leaves glinted like diamonds in the streetlights.</p><p>He’d stayed after school that day to help with final preparation, so when he returned that night, it was as if he’d never left. His parents went to take their early, open spots in the front rows of seats, and Renjun entered the backstage through the hallway door. Several kids had already arrived, wearing their black stage crew tees and organizing props. Renjun removed his coat to match and slipped into his work, helping to move a cardboard wall to the side of the stage. Through the closed curtains, he could hear the murmur of the gathering audience. The sense of expectation had always excited him before a show, but this year was different. He felt an inkling of dread. Like it was the last night of his life.</p><p>At some point, without Renjun noticing, Jaemin had arrived and was sitting in front of one of the vanities, his costume being prepared.</p><p>They looked at each other through the mirror.</p><p>Renjun did not approach him this time. No “good luck,” no “break a leg.” Just the briefest reminder of yesterday’s encounter before Jaemin was thrust under the stage lights, forced to seem unbothered and in the moment despite everything. It was lucky he was such a good actor.</p><p>The rest of the stage crew enjoyed the play from the wings. They all knew the story too well to be properly moved by the beats, but when the audience laughed, they couldn’t help but laugh too, and when the audience sucked in a shocked breath, they went perfectly silent, experiencing it vicariously through them. Renjun did not join in. <em>Romeo and Juliet </em>had never moved him in the first place.</p><p>“<em>O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.</em>”</p><p>He knew this scene. It was the kiss. Against his better judgement, Renjun moved closer to the stage, pressing himself to the bunched-up velvet curtain. From here, he could see the back of Soyoung’s head as she looked up at Jaemin, and Jaemin beyond that, haloed by his spotlight. He had nothing else to do, so Renjun crouched in the fold of the curtain, in the dark of the backstage, and watched it all play out.</p><p>When the kiss happened, Renjun did not expect it to hit him like it did. It wasn’t a suckerpunch, but a week-old bruise. A quiet kind of heartbreak that crept up on him. Jaemin pulled back when it was over, and he spoke, but Renjun wasn’t listening. He was only watching his face, how cruelly handsome he looked in his costume with the high white collar and the blue stitching. It dawned on Renjun then that he wouldn’t have this forever. After tonight, drama club would be over for the semester. Then in a week the semester would end, too, then the year. Maybe he wouldn’t come back to the club in the spring, because he wouldn’t be able to bear being there with Jaemin and not being able to kiss him again. He knew how Jaemin operated. He’d think it over a day, but let Renjun go, because his soulmate was more important to him than his best friend.</p><p>You could only live a first love once, and Renjun was being slowly shut out of his. He cried silently against the curtain, shoulders shaking, eyes still locked on Jaemin as if refusing to relinquish him.</p><p>In the first grade, they’d played a game. All the kids in the class had made a circle. In the center was a tangled web of red string, each thread indistinguishable from the others. “Everyone pick an end,” the teacher had told them, pointing to where the ends stuck out, tied into tiny loops. “Then we’ll untangle them together.”</p><p>Renjun had picked up the loop closest to him. He’d peered around the circle and saw Jaemin on the other side, taking a long time to make a choice. When he finally did, he’d given it a tentative tug, as if testing the strength of the thread. Renjun had waved and smiled reassuringly. Jaemin had smiled back.</p><p>“Okay,” the teacher had said. “Let’s start untangling. Make sure you don’t let go of your string!”</p><p>The kids had begun to shuffle around. Raising arms over one another, ducking beneath each other’s strings, feet getting wrapped up and nearly tripping. It was several minutes before the mass in the middle began to thin out. Renjun had made a little excited gasp, because it looked as if he and Jaemin had chosen the same string. Then another child had shifted around, and the strings had separated more, and Renjun had realized with a sick feeling that Jaemin was being tugged in another direction. At the end of Renjun’s string had been a girl with pigtails and pink Mary-Janes. He’d stared at her blankly, then at the teacher.</p><p>“This is how your string will work someday, when you’re all a bit older,” she’d explained. “It will appear suddenly, and lead you to someone else. You may not have even ever met that person before. But they’ll be your soulmate, and after that, your husband or wife.”</p><p>Renjun had looked at the girl again. He’d spoken to her only once, during recess, when he’d asked her if he could borrow her yellow crayon.</p><p>Jaemin was attached to some other boy.</p><p>It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t fair.</p><p>Renjun had balled up the end of his string, and tossed it in the girl’s face.</p><p>“Renjun!” the teacher had cried. “What are you doing?” She’d come over and put a hand on his back, directing him to his desk. “That wasn’t very nice,” she’d reprimanded him. “What’s the matter with you?”</p><p>He had not answered. Alone at his desk, as the other kids continued their stupid game, he’d decided that he was not interested in strings and soulmates. They did not mean a single thing. Why couldn’t the grown-ups see that, when he, only a little kid, could?</p><p>Renjun buried his face in his knees as he crouched at the side of the stage, and wondered if somewhere along the way, he’d made a mistake.</p><p>At the end of the night, after the curtain call, he saw Jaemin with a bouquet of flowers. Another gift from another girl.</p><p>“Nice performance tonight,” Renjun told him.</p><p>Jaemin looked like he wanted to say something, but before he could, Renjun walked away.</p><p>—</p><p>It was a freezing night, four days before Christmas. Renjun was laying in his bed. He’d gone there early, feeling too miserable to bear his parents’ sweetness as they’d watched a movie on the couch, hands liked beneath the blanket. He was thankful they were so in love, but it was beginning to feel more and more everyday like a painful reminder.</p><p>He hadn’t spoken to Jaemin since opening night. Even at the other three showings, he’d done his best to avoid him, slipping away between sets and leaving the moment the play was over, not waiting so they could walk home together. It was too awkward, too difficult.</p><p>Where had they begun to go wrong? It must have been years ago now, for things to seem so irreversible. Renjun knew that if they put things out in the open now, there might be no repairing them. But a broken thing was better than one with the cracks painted over. He pressed his face to his pillow, feeling surprisingly at peace. This had always been an inevitability. He’d simply been too naive to see it.</p><p>There was a knock on his bedroom door. Renjun plopped his phone which he’d been scrolling uselessly through onto his comforter, rubbed his eyes, and said, “What?”</p><p>“Jaemin came to see you,” his mother said.</p><p>Renjun blinked.</p><p>“He what?”</p><p>“Can I come in?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>His mother opened the door and leaned a shoulder against it. “What I was saying, is that Jaemin came to see you. He’s downstairs.”</p><p>“No he isn’t,” Renjun said disbelievingly.</p><p>“He definitely is. Saw him with my own two eyes. Are you gonna keep him waiting?”</p><p>Renjun sat up and groped at the front of his shirt. “I’m — I’m in my pajamas.”</p><p>His mother shot him a question mark glance. “I’m quite sure Jaemin has seen you in your pajamas a million times. Are you alright? Do you feel sick or something?”</p><p>“No,” Renjun said. He got out of bed, sorry to be leaving the warmth of his blankets behind but too curious to wait any longer. He followed his mother down the stairs and into the living room.</p><p>Jaemin, as she’d said, was standing just inside the front door, still in his coat, white flakes clinging in his hair. Renjun did not have the self-control anymore to deny that he looked incredible, eyes dark and face snow-flushed and lips pressed together in a soft, tentative smile.</p><p>“Hey,” Jaemin said.</p><p>“Hey,” Renjun whispered.</p><p>“I wanna talk. Do you want to go outside for a minute?”</p><p>“It’s cold.”</p><p>“Put a coat on, dummy.”</p><p>Renjun slipped his boots on his bare feet, bundled up in his coat and scarf, and followed Jaemin out into the yard.</p><p>The snow was high. It clung to the ends of Renjun’s pajama pants as he trudged through, so cold it burned on his calves. Jaemin took him a good distance from the front door to ensure their privacy, standing close to the stone fence, which was covered in a layer of glossy ice. Above them, the stars had begun to peak through the dark of the winter evening sky, pretty but cool-lighted.</p><p>“So,” Renjun said. “What are you thinking?”</p><p>Jaemin put his gloved hands in his pockets. It made the fabric of his coat tug at his shoulders, and he seemed suddenly broad, like he was on the edge of outgrowing it. “We haven’t talked in a while. I miss it. It feels wrong.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Renjun agreed.</p><p>“And we need to talk. We — we can’t just keep ignoring this stuff. Or else it’ll keep piling up.” He dragged a foot through the snow, disturbing its fine layers. More snow quickly fell to replace it.</p><p>“Then you start.” Renjun held out a hand, as if gesturing for Jaemin to take the floor. “You were the one who wanted to talk. Give me your best pitch.”</p><p>“I’m in love with you,” Jaemin said.</p><p>“Oh,” Renjun said.</p><p>“I knew it for a while. But then you kissed me, and that kind of sealed the deal. So. What do you think of that?” He shyly rubbed his nose, foggy breath puffing on his fingers. He was much braver than Renjun had ever expected of him. He’d grown up so much, and it suited him so well.</p><p>It made it hard to say what Renjun said next:</p><p>“It won’t work.”</p><p>He could see the heartbreak on Jaemin’s face, like a sharp crack through ice. “Why not?” Jaemin asked hoarsely.</p><p>“You want to marry your soulmate,” Renjun said.</p><p>“But you could be. I really think you are.” Jaemin took a step closer, snow crunching underfoot. “God, I feel like I <em>know </em>it, Renjun. Ever since we were kids — I never really doubted it, I know that one of these days, we’ll find that string, and it’ll be the two of us —”</p><p>“You don’t know that,” Renjun interrupted. “That’s the problem with you. You’re so obsessed with the soulmates thing, you try to bend backwards to make it fit. But you know there’s a chance that we won’t have the same string. You know it. What then? You break up with me? You go find your proper soulmate and forget I ever existed?” Renjun sucked in a searing breath. “I couldn’t compare to your soulmate, Jaemin.”</p><p>Jaemin was too shocked to say anything. His mouth hung open, useless.</p><p>That was fine. Now that Renjun was spilling over, he couldn’t stop, and he had to let out every thought he’d kept from Jaemin for the past decade.</p><p>“You know why I hate this whole soulmate thing in the first place?” he said, voice rising, tears unexpectedly rising with it. “Because I’m afraid it won’t be you. And if it isn’t you, you won’t want me. That’s why I won’t have it. I won’t bend like that. And it’s so, so frustrating to watch you treat it like the end-all-be-all.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Jaemin choked out. “I didn’t know that was why.”</p><p>“I don’t want any sorries. I want — I <em>need </em>a guarantee. That you’ll be with me, even if I’m not on the other end of that string.” He raised his hand, red fingered, pinky up. The place the string would be tied, if they could only see it. “If you can’t promise me that, then I don’t want your love.”</p><p>The snow muffled all other noise. It made Renjun feel like they were the only two people in the world. Maybe this was the end of their world, he thought, and in a moment, Jaemin would walk out of it. He had to be fine with it if it happened. He’d made his appeal. There was nothing else he could do. He shut his eyes and furled his hands into fists, waiting as always for Jaemin to make a choice.</p><p>He listened to the silence, the snow touching the ground.</p><p>“Then let’s get married,” Jaemin said.</p><p>Renjun nearly fell over on the spot.</p><p>“What?” he breathed.</p><p>“You said you wanted a guarantee.” Jaemin’s face was completely red, blushing hot enough it might have melted a snowflake if it landed on his cheek. “That’s as close as I can get, isn’t it? It’s a promise, at least. We’d be engaged, and then when we graduate in the spring — as soon after that as possible — we’d get married. String or no string.”</p><p>“Are you for real?” Renjun asked. “Are you joking?”</p><p>“I’m not joking. That’s my promise. I’d marry you right now, but I don’t think our parents would appreciate it, so.” He closed the gap between them, cradling Renjun’s face in his hands. “Does that make the whole soulmate thing clear? I want you, whether you’re my soulmate or not. Though I still think it’s you, for the record.”</p><p>Renjun sniffled, tear dripping onto Jaemin’s gloved palm as he said, “Yes, it’s clear, though you’d better stop talking before you dig yourself a bigger hole.”</p><p>Jaemin laughed, letting their noses bump. “Is that a yes, then?”</p><p>Renjun answered him with a kiss. Jaemin’s arms dropped to his waist, holding him tightly, lifting him off the ground. He had a vague thought that maybe his parents were watching them from inside the front door, but he was going to have to tell them he was engaged anyway, so he couldn’t be embarrassed at being seen stealing a kiss; this was only the beginning.</p><p>“Did you buy some chapstick?” he murmured against Jaemin’s lips.</p><p>“Yes. You made me rather self-conscious.”</p><p>Renjun smiled and kissed him again.</p><p>He wondered what he would say to the kids at school when they returned from their winter break, but he decided they might keep it their little secret. He didn’t want a flock of boys and girls around his desk, asking for the details. He wanted Jaemin only for him, this <em>moment </em>only for him — carved into the snow and the lines of his heart, permanent like a promise.</p><p>—</p><p>When Renjun woke the next morning, there was a string around his pinky and leading away from his bed, but he found he did not care where it ended.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks to everyone for reading!! i look forward as always to your comments!</p><p>a very special thank you to my prompter, vivi, who came up with this fic idea. thank you for bearing with the changes and questions, and especially for all your patience -- i know i said i would have this fic done a long time ago, but life and the wait for inspiration to spring got in the way. i think i like where this ended up, but it wouldn't exist without you!! 💕 muah</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/playing_prince">twitter</a> | <a href="https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince">cc</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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